its many fleets. Some of the most successful and heroic feats of arms in the history of the Nether-lands were performed by the sailors in the pay of this company; steel in their hands brought greater profit than gold; and the fortunate stockholders of Amsterdam and Zealand received enormous dividends from the sale of the spoil of the sacked cities of Brazil, and of the captured treasure-ships which had once formed part of the Spanish silver fleet.

In the midst of this turmoil of fighting and trading, the company had little time to think of colonizing. Nevertheless, in 1624 some families of protestant Walloons were sent to the Hudson in the ship New Netherland a few of them staying on Manhattan Island. The following summer several more families arrived, and the city may be said to have been really founded, the dwellers on Manhattan Island after that date including permanent settlers besides the mere transient furtraders. Finally in May, 1626, the director, Peter Minuit, a Westphalian, appointed by the company as first governor of the colony, arrived in the harbor in his ship the Sea-Mew, leading a band of true colonists,men who brought with them their wives and little ones, their cattle and their house-holdgoods, and who settled down in the land with the purpose of holding it for themselves and for their children's children.